Nothing I guess
When some users ask a question, there are a list of five or so similar questions, sometimes they are completely unrelated, but some people say, yes this is the same as my question and that is why there are unrelated questions attached to some.
I do it b/c it's fun, and it feels good to be helpful. Knowledge is something you can share and keep at the same time. Other contributors may have other reasons.
It is unrelated
Yes. They are unrelated programs and do not affect each other.
They are unrelated.
They're not necessarily prohibited as much as they're discouraged. On WikiAnswers, we discourage double posting the same question because it takes contributors away from answering other new questions. Also it slows down the site because of the time required to monitor for vandalism and inaccuracies.
Look over at the blue tool bar on the left. There is a link that says Edit Alternate Wordings. Click it, and it will take you to the page where you can split off questions that aren't asking the same thing.
Members of The Initiates Program do not have access to the merge tool. TIP members can request merges in the same way as other contributors by changing the wording of a question to match the wording of the question they wish it to be merged to. You can also ask a supervisor to merge questions for you (or your TIP Supervisor if you are a member). Merging is a supervisor-only tool.
I know many of the answers to many questions, and I am here because I know the answers. That is the same reason why many other contributors are here. If they don't know the answer to a question, then they are helping WikiAnswers in a different way - i.e., splitting alternates, asking questions, recategorizing questions, etc. And... we're trying to help. we answer what we can. would you rather we just randomly answer questions so they're wrong? No, so chill out and take a pill.
People who are contributors and supervisors on WikiAnswers are here because we like answering questions and helping people learn new things, so we don't hate questions. We do get a little annoyed when every single kid in a classroom asks some variation of the same homework question within 10 minutes of each other and ignores the actual answer that's already on the website....
They don't. Sometimes supervisors may accidentally do that, but they will always fix it later.When supervisors combine questions into another question, that is called "merging." This is necessary when many questions are asking the same thing.For example, the following questions are asking the same thing:Why aren't the answers to my questions good?How come the answers are sarcastic on WikiAnswers?Why does WikiAnswers prove not good at getting you right answers?These will all be merged into one primary question:Why are there no good answers to my questions?
Many such questions have been put together on WikiAnswers by people who didn't really know the impact that would have on the site. If you find a question that has been classed as being the same as another but it is not, please feel free to unmerge it. If you are not a member I don't think you can unmerge questions, but if you are, the word Unmerge can be found on the left of a question, in the blue area.